bingaman: mr. president, earlier today, the senate voted to grant permanent normal trade relations to russia by a vote of 92-4 and i strongly supported that bill. to extend pntr to russia, we had to repeal an out-of-date policy that was adopted during the cold war. that is, the jackson-vanik amendment. i want to speak briefly on the senate floor this afternoon about another out-of-date policy of the cold war that i believe should be ended, and that is the trade embargo on cuba. i have spoken about this many times in the past, along with senator pell, senator dodd and many others. i argued against the helms-burton act in 1996. for the past 50 years, our country's policy toward cuba has been essentially stagnant. the core element of our policy, our foreign policy, which is the embargo, has authorized in a proclamation signed by president kennedy on february 3, 1962. that's 51 years ago. at that time, president kennedy justified the embargo by citing the -- quote -- "subversive, offensive of sino-sovi